In a funding round headed by Maverick Capital, Silicon Valley semiconductor firm SiMa.ai raised $70 million to build chips intended to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) applications within common consumer products, such as cameras and autos.
In addition to the venture firm’s current backers Amplify Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and Fidelity Management, Point72 and Jericho also participated in the financing. The San Jose-based company has raised a total of $270 million for its processor designs, which are intended to assist gadgets in comprehending their surroundings and transforming that information into text, audio, or video material.
One of the many businesses striving to optimize hardware for a time when artificial intelligence is widely used is SiMa.ai. Having been established in 2018, its board members include Lip-Bu Tan, a board member of Intel Corp., and Moshe Gavrielov, a director of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The purpose of SiMa.ai’s chips is not AI training, wherein expensive processors, like those made by Nvidia Corp., are used to create ChatGPT-type services or train artificial intelligence models to identify between dogs and cats. Instead, the business focuses on inference, which is the process by which a device’s AI model recognizes items.
Founder and CEO of SiMa.ai Krishna Rangasayee stated that the company has over 50 customers for its initial chip, which was primarily focused on computer vision, and is currently developing a second generation. The first quarter of the next year is when the new chip is expected to be released.
“We are now combining all this modality so that you could look at all of it. You could speak, you could touch, you could feel. And we’re kind of mimicking human capability,” he said about the startup’s new chip.
Rangasayee stated that although Nvidia’s software is currently the industry standard for much AI development worldwide, the tools on the devices are open-source and utilized by more than 10,000 distinct company clients globally. Products from SiMa.ai are compatible with multiple open standards, including as Linux and OpenCL.
TSMC is now the company’s primary supplier of chips. SiMa.ai is backed by VentureTech Alliance, which has a strategic alliance with the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer.
According to Rangasayee, “We really call ourselves a software company that builds their own silicon.”